Customer Discovery Best Practices Lean Startup and Design
Customer Discovery Best Practices Lean Startup and Design Thinking “You’re really think you need to teach us how to talk to people? ”
The Art of Listening to Your Customers
Pre-Planning Customer Discovery Pre-Planning Pt. 1 (4: 55) Pre-Planning Pt. 2 (3: 25) Pre-Planning Pt. 3 (1: 29)
Customer Discovery Interviews Pt. 1 (5: 40) Interviews Pt. 2 (3: 49) Asking the Right Question (2: 37)
Outside the Building Death by Demo 1 (2: 18) Death by Demo 2 (1: 45) Assuming You Know what the customer wants (1: 56) Understanding the Customer Problem (the wrong way) or Death by Power. Point (1: 42) Understanding the Problem (the right way) (3: 22) Customers Lie (2: 37) The Distracted Customer (3: 12) Engaging the Customer (3: 37) Customer Empathy (2: 25) The User, the Buyer & the Saboteur (2: 24) Multi-Person Interview (2: 03) B-to-B to C (2: 15) Existing vs. New Markets (5: 29) Public Interviews (2: 11)
Back in the Building Extracting Insight from Data (2: 59) Getting the MVP Right (3: 34) Pay Attention to Outliers (2: 16) The “Other 85%” (2: 32)
Customer Interviews the most difficult part of the process!
Customer Interviews conversations the most difficult part of the process!
#1 –Don’t talk about your technology!!! #2 – The interviewing process must be deliberate! #3 – A survey is NOT an interview!
FOUR PARTS TO THE PROCESS Planning Landing Conducting Analysis
Customer Discovery – Planning an Interview WHO SHOULD I INTERVIEW? Focus first on people you think fill these roles: End User, Decision Maker, Payer Focus on people you don’t already know! They have no relationship to protect. (*people you know are good for meeting other people)
Customer Discovery – Planning an Interview HOW TO FIND THE PEOPLE Find people working at your customer companies Find people that used to work at customer companies Find people that work for your competitors Do NOT interview the CEO first!
Customer Discovery – Planning an Interview WHAT ELSE SHOULD I PREPARE? Have a purpose Know what you think you can learn from this person before you get there. Make guesses about what your customer will say.
Customer Discovery – Landing an Interview QUICK introduction (look for warm introductions). Establish credibility. (NSF, researcher, use first names) Appeal to EGO “I know you’re an expert - I want to learn from you. ” Seek help. You are researchers, not salesmen! Handle “What are you doing / Why are you calling. ” Diffuse “We need and NDA. ” Seal the deal: 10 -15 minutes, get on the schedule, thank them.
Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW? Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone
Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW? Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone
Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW? Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone Try to access to their facility whenever possible.
Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW? Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone Try to access to their facility whenever possible. Take two people whenever possible –assign roles!
Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW? Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone Try to access to their facility whenever possible. Take two people whenever possible –assign roles!
Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW? Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone Try to access to their facility whenever possible. Take two people whenever possible –assign roles!
Get excited to hear what you don’t want to Conducting customer interviews hear! Focus on first-hand accounts, not on speculative or abstract thoughts from secondary sources. Ask for introductions to first hand accounts!
Asking the right questions Always ask open-ended questions. Never ask multiple choice questions. Target the who, what, why, and how. Follow the 5 whys! Avoid is, are, would, do you think, and should.
ALWAYS FINISH WITH… “What did I forget to ask? ” “Is there anyone else you think I should meet? ”
Interpretation of data – the CORE of Customer Discovery Turn data into information through pattern recognition! This means STATISTICS!!! 100 interviews over 5 segments, each with two VPs results in only 10 data points! This is not statistically relevant! Make sure you spend as much time interpreting the data as you are collecting it!
SAMPLE QUESTIONS – start broad, then focus *tailor these generalized questions to your specific scenario What are the top three problems customers are trying to solve? What are they currently doing to solve them? If your customer could wave a magic wand fix one thing or generate one outcome, what would it be? What would it take for your customer to change their behavior and adopt a new technology, process, or solution? Who else would have to be involved to make it
Q&A
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